Friday, January 6, 2012

A book can surprise you. I have just finished a book about Fred Harvey and the settling of the West. The meaningful imprint from this is that our day to day life is shaped in so many ways by things we're not even aware of from the past. I feel a grief over the fact that an empire, which I had no knowledge of before randomly buying this book from a shelf in the basement of the National Archives, no longer exists. It is far more extinct than the Pony Express or the time of the railroads with which it shared its success and glory. This lack of connection makes today a lonely entity in the ever ticking countdown of human history. Why is it that even my grandpa who loves the past knows nothing about this? What might this imprudent choice of buying a book off the shelf in a real store lead to now that I've finished? I want to know what history is being made today. Much more fiercely though, I want to know what is it that we're forgetting?